The Slippery Slope
by Erin Kamikaze
Summary: Mitarashi Anko is assigned to young Naruto as his mentor. To teach him the shinobi ways, she'll have to deal with the knucklehead of a shinobi's seeming lack of skill, their mutual hatred, and her own past.


Welcome to my first multichapter fanfiction! I hope you enjoy.

Some things to consider before reading:

is not an romance between Anko and Naruto. In this story, Anko takes up more of the mentor role. I love NaruAnko as much as the next crackshipper, but my story is not of that nature. I'm sorry if you came here looking for that.

2. In this story, Naruto and the rest of his class are around eight, while Anko is sixteen. This is after Orochimaru leaves the village, but before the Uchiha Massacre.

3. I will attempt to not make any glaring faux pas, such as mispelling names or making a character the wrong age or something. I might fill some holes in canon or tweak things a bit, but, even though this is fanfiction, I will try to stick to canon dates, at least in the beginning.

4. Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto in any way, shape, or form. That honour belongs to Masashi Kishimoto.

5. Please leave a review. :)

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Anko hated kids.

She didn't know why, but they had always irked her to no end. Maybe it was the way they looked, so weak and vulnerable. Maybe it was the way they acted, always skittish and asking too many questions. It might have even been jealousy, that they could live so obliviously, skating through their happy days while the adults had to deal with reality. Whatever it was, children were at the top of the list of things she never wanted to deal with.

Which was why she was at a loss of what to do with a crying Naruto lying at her feet.

She honestly didn't know why the kid was even crying. The purple haired Chunin had been in a rush to get to the Hokage's office, following a summons she had received the day before. A mix of accidentally overdosing on her sleep aid and forgetting to set her alarm had led to one late Anko Mitarashi. In her mad dash to the Hokage's tower, she had bumped into a scurrying Naruto. The much smaller kid had made an unfortunate acquaintance with the ground , and Anko was just about to warn the kid to look out where he was going when he began to bawl his eyes out, reminding her of a watering pot.

Anko ran her hand through her hair nervously as she puzzled over what to do in the situation. 'I didn't even hit him that hard,' she thought. She was definitely not equipped with the knowledge to deal with the crying Kyuubi container, but had to try.

"Hey," she told the Kyuubi container in the gentlest voice she could muster, which probably sounded like she was torturing the kid to the surrounding people. "Get up. I only bumped you a bit. The kid sat there, still imitating a watering pot. "Come on, get up!" He didn't move, and now was sobbing even harder. Exasperated, she yanked the boy up by the front of his t-shirt and shook him violently. "I said GET UP. Are you deaf or something?" He looked at her a moment, large tears running down his face, then headbutted her in the face with a surprisingly large amount of force for a young boy. Anko cried out in pain, her nose feeling like it had been hit by a brick, and her grip on the boy loosened enough for him to squirm loose. Naruto sprinted down the street, looking back at Anko with what looked like a mocking expression to the injured female, as she tried to stem the seemingly endless flow of blood that poured from her aching nose.

Anko's vision had gone red with anger, matching the shade of the blood. 'So he wants to play like that,' she thought viscously, and began to give chase. Gone was the urgency to get to the Hokage's office. Her meeting with the head of the village was the farthest thing from her mind. All that mattered now was catching the brat and making him pay for her pain in blood.

The boy was actually surprisingly hard to catch. Anko jumped around on rooftops and looked down backstreets until she finally found him, huddling in an alley, hiding behind a dumpster that she could tell reeked, even though she couldn't smell anything but dried blood out of her injured nose. Anko actually gave the kid credit for such a good hiding spot. To anyone worse at tracking than herself, the kid would have been undiscovered. She quietly climbed on the dumpster, careful not to let the kid hear her. She crept across it and leaned right behind Naruto. "Found you," she whispered maliciously in his ear.

Naruto jerked upright, startled. Anko grinned evilly at him. "Thought you could hit me and get away with it, did you kid?" She chuckled darkly. Naruto made a move to run away from the snake mistress, but had his hopes dashed when he realized Anko was standing in the way of the only exit . "No, you don't get to run, kid," she said, taking a step toward him.

The one thing Anko still hadn't figured out was how to take her revenge. She could kill the kid, but somehow couldn't see that flying with the village leaders, no matter how unliked the kid was. She also couldn't see beating him up, as that wouldn't go well either. With killing and beating ruled out, Anko Maharishi decided she would have to do what she did best: scare the living crap out of people.

With that decided, she began to walk slowly towards Naruto, grinning manically the whole way. Naruto, probably finding some hidden seed of courage in his cowardly demeanor, didn't flee like Anko thought he would, instead standing with a defiant air. "I'm not scared of you, you evil hag!" He yelled at her. Anko bristled. 'A hag, am I?' She formed several hand seals, and out of the dark shadows of the alley came dozens of snakes. Of course they weren't real, but the kid didn't have to know that.

When Naruto saw the snakes, Anko saw his face go milk white. "I'm still not afraid of you," he said, but his words sounded empty. Anko laughed loudly.

"Just because you aren't scared of me doesn't mean I can't hurt you."

"Then do it! You're just another one of them, hating me for no reason! Well, guess what?! I hate you too!" Anko paused, and her snake illusion wavered. Naruto took that chance to dash past her and flee the alley

'Just another of them…" The boy's words echoed in her ears. Anko knew what he was talking about. All the hateful looks, the angry whispers, the cold feeling she got when walking by a group of people. It was her against the world, and from what she could tell from the kid's words, he was in the same place as her. ''Maybe I was a little harsh," she mumbled to herself. She decided that after her appointment with the Hokage, she'd seek the kid out and possibly apologize. At least she would make sure his encounter with her didn't leave him mentally scarred. Her appointment with the Hokage….

"Shit," Anko gasped. Her appointment with the Hokage! She sprinted down the road as fast as her legs would take her. 'I was already ten minutes late and took ten minutes chasing the brat around, so…. Twenty minutes ago was my appointment!" People in the streets gawked at the kunoichi speeding down the street. Anko ignored them. She was used to the stares.

When Anko reached the Hokage tower, she threw open the doors and raced up the stairs, ignoring the secretary who yelled after her "Hey, you just can't go up there like that!" She located the office and stopped in front of the door, tamping down her flyaway hair and smoothing the wrinkles out of her clothing. She made sure she was presentable before opening the door and walking inside.

In the office were three people. The Hokage sat at his desk, looking as serene and grandfatherly as normal, his hat proudly displaying the symbol for fire. One of the Academy teachers in training, Inuka or something like that, was sitting in one of the plush chairs in front of the desk. The third occupant of the room was an unpleasant surprise.

The brat jumped on the Hokage's desk, sending papers flying everywhere, and gestured violently at her, reminding Anko of a little monkey. "That's the lady, Gramps! She's the one who attacked me!"

"Is this true, Anko?" The Hokage asked disapprovingly.

Anko could feel a vein popping. "I didn't attack him, I only bumped into him! Then he wouldn't stop crying, so I gave him something to cry about!"

"Liar! You pushed me down and attacked me with your snake thingies!"

"They were just illusions, you-"

"Anko, that's enough," the Hokage said sternly, interrupting Anko just before she could call Naruto a choice name. Anko shut her mouth, as did Naruto, and they both stared at the Hokage. He smiled serenely again.

"Now Anko, I called you here because I have an important mission for you." Anko's heart skipped a beat. An actual mission! She'd been stuck doing patrols and easy missions of that nature since… the incident. Now it seemed like the Hokage had begun to trust her again.

"All right, tell me what it is! Is it an assassination, or an espionage mission, or a bodyguard assignment? When do I need to have my stuff ready to go by?" Questions seemed to spill from her mouth in her excitement. The Hokage simply smiled benignly. "It's neither of those, and you don't have to pack your bags. In fact, you don't even have to leave the village."

"Oh… what is it then?"

"Your mission is to take care of Naruto here and train him in the shinobi ways."

With those words, Anko felt her world crashing down around her.


End file.
